


Red Days in Wishbone City

by Selden



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Incest, Mild Knifeplay, Minor Character Death, Mummy Issues, Violence, background societal misogyny, dubcon, mention of suicide, use and misuse of Christian imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-28 22:05:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15715998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selden/pseuds/Selden
Summary: “Your mask really is the loveliest I’ve seen in ages,” she said. “I’m going to so enjoy taking it off you, piece by piece.”





	Red Days in Wishbone City

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thedevilchicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/gifts).



“You can take me now,” said Arvin to the demon.  
  
“Why, yes,” said the demon. “I could.” She didn’t move.  
  
Arvin shrugged, and watched as the queen fell down. Blood pulsed from her breast, one two, one two, then slowed and spread across the marble floor. In the sharp sun which came between the throne room pillars, it was the colour of redcurrants, almost too bright to bear. She let her sword drop from her hand. It clattered and skidded away, leaving a wet red streak behind it as it went.  
  
The demon’s name was Carrow of the Eyes. Indeed, her eyes were beautiful, and very blue. The rest of her was not, although her face was piquant – fresh and young. Her hair was grey. Her skin was white as a cheap china plate. She watched Arvin watching the queen and smiled. “There you go. Exactly as requested. I could take you away right now.” She stepped delicately over the fallen figure of the queen, and touched one light, dry finger to Arvin’s half-open lips. “I don’t think I will, though,” she said. “Not yet.”  
  
“You said you would.” Arvin gestured towards the body of the queen. “That’s all I asked you for. Our contract is fulfilled.”  
  
“I said I’d take you,” said Carrow. “I don’t recall I ever told you when.”  
  
For a little while, there was silence in the throne room of the queen of Wishbone City. The summer afternoon hung still around the palace, stirred only by the breath of sleeping guards. The queen’s corpse smelled of civet, and of blood. And Arvin Seconday, swordfighter and champion of the lower city, tall and broad-shouldered, scarred across the face, her hair shaved down to a coarse stipple of greying brown across her scalp – Arvin looked for a moment as if she might crack right across, like granite broken up by years of frost. Instead, she drew herself up, as if about to enter the ring again for the next round. “Why?” she asked. Her voice, which, sweet and hoarse, had been called beautiful when she was young, was soft as dust.  
  
“Why not?” Carrow tugged at her hand. “You surely can’t be eager for me to claim your soul. Hell isn’t very nice, you know.”  
  
Arvin snorted, and shook her head. “I’m not.”  
  
“Well, then.” Carrow nodded towards the throne, carved out of nacreous giant-flesh and reflecting little rills of light across the floor. “I don’t suppose you’ve changed your mind? You’d make a lovely queen, you know.”  
  
“I haven’t.” Arvin bent down and picked up her sword. Like all the best blades, it too was made of giant-flesh, so that it shone like pearl. Taking a rag out of the pocket of her leather jerkin, she began methodically cleaning off the blood. “I wanted to remove a tyrant, not to claim the throne. The queen has ruled for centuries. She has no heirs – she saw to that herself.” She gave the blade a final wipe, returned it to the scabbard at her hip. “I’ve made an opening, that’s all.”  
  
“And you don’t care who fills it?”  
  
“It isn’t that I don’t care. It’s that I don’t know. The Cathedral? The Shadow Boys? The Lovely Runners? Any one of them might come out on top. Or some other faction I don’t even know about.”  
  
“I take it you thought you’d be down in hell already,” Carrow suggested delicately, “so you never really bothered to speculate?” She tapped a fingernail against her scarlet lips. In the bright, banded sunlight of the pillared throne-room, her skin was as white as a cheap china plate, just waiting to be smeared. “That doesn’t sound very heroic,” she said. “Perhaps you’re more mine than I thought.”  
  
“I thought I was yours by definition,” said Arvin. “And I never said I was heroic. I just know my limitations, is all. Politicking is one of them.” The queen’s blood was losing its shine around the edges, turning tacky in the heat. “Come on,” she said. “If you’re not taking me now, we should get out of here. Or I should. The guards will be waking up soon.”  
  
“Not until I wish it,” said Carrow. But she turned all the same, and led the way towards the throne-room door. Tall and grey-haired, wearing an unfashionable white dress swagged round with draggled bows and frills, she looked a little like one of the superannuated mistresses of the Ventime Quarter, out on a stroll to take a bowl of lemon tea in some café as faded as her dress, smelling of potpourri and faint stale sweat. But then she turned her head, and winked. The effect was obscene – as though the world itself had opened up to show some pulsing slit, ripe as an autumn plum and fizzing with decay. “Come on,” she said.  
  
Arvin licked her dry lips, and followed her. They walked through the calm hallways of the palace, past rooms where soldiers nodded, snoring, at their posts. Past the dead men still sitting at the table in the council chamber. It was the first place Arvin had gone when she entered the palace. The Chancellor’s pet marmoset was sitting on the table, eating pink sugared almonds from a bowl. Arvin paused in the doorway; glanced at the waxy faces of the men she’d killed.  
  
“You’ve made a lot of openings, today,” Carrow observed.  
  
Arvin shrugged, and passed on.  
  
They came out on the shining curve of the Queen’s Way which led down to the city. One flank of the great giant which formed the foundations of the palace, it glistened in the sun like the inside of a mussel shell, grey and pink and blueish white and green. The palace grew up around it like bleached coral. One shining arm splayed out across the upper city, showing behind the lead and copper roofs of merchant’s great-houses like dirty ice. Its gauntleted hand sprawled out in Ventime Park, a bandstand perched on its huge open palm. The sky was blue, the sun was hot. The city buzzed and hummed. They hurried down.  
  
The city opened up around them like a bruise.

  
  
\--

  
  
Arvin’s lodgings were in the lower city, down by the Arguile Canal, in a tall house which had once been grand. Now the plaster mouldings were soft to the touch and scaly with damp, and thin partitions ran across what had once been spacious rooms. Under the limp page of an old broadsheet, a dish of milk tarts waited by the window.  
  
“I didn’t think I’d get to eat these,” Arvin remarked. She twitched the broadsheet off them and began to eat, steadily and seriously, pausing to lick crumbs of her fingers. Three tarts in, she remembered herself and, rather diffidently, offered one to Carrow.  
  
Carrow stared down at the tarts. “I think not,” she said.  
  
“Suit yourself.” Arvin demolished another tart in three quick bites. “I don’t expect you’re going to tell me when you’re take me?”  
  
“When you’re ripe,” said Carrow.  
  
“I’d say I was overripe already.” Arvin covered the tarts again and poured herself a glass of the lower city’s weak and sour beer. Then she sat, sprawling a little in a red-painted wooden chair, staring out of the window at the tannic waters of the canal far below. Docks grew out of the ragged stonework of its banks, and nettles. Red valerian. The water was quite still. “Are you going to stay here, then? I can’t see how it’s worth your while, but you can sleep on the sofa in the corner.”  
  
Carrow looked at the sofa. It was an old chaise longue, perhaps dating from the house’s better days. Now its yellow brocade was torn and sun-faded, the colour of dry sand. Splatters of grease or tallow marked the arm. Besides the cheap deal table and the chairs, it was the only piece of furniture in the room. An almanac was hung up by the window; a pile of broadsheets rested on the floor. A pearl-handled penknife and a jar of wilting violets sat on the windowsill, catching the sun. Through one half-open door, the corner of a neatly made-up bed was visible, the scarlet counterpane patched near the floor with faded blue. A set of throwing knives sat on the table, by the remaining milk tarts in their pale green dish.

“You’re staying here?” she asked. She sounded scandalised.  
  
“What do you mean? You said no-one would know who killed the queen and Council. There isn’t any need for me to flit.”  
  
Carrow pinched the bridge of her nose. “You understand that you can ask for anything? You bought me with your soul, Arvin, my dove. I’m here to serve.”  
  
“Still?” For the first time since she’d entered the room, Arvin glanced towards the chalk circle and crude Enochian symbols drawn on the floor, a little smudged by Carrow’s trailing skirts. “I thought our deal was done. You’re only waiting to collect, aren’t you?”  
  
“But while we wait, I can give you the world.” Carrow’s voice grew low and lilting, a promise and a tease. “I can bring you spices out from long-forgotten tombs. Sweet wines, rich brandy from the queen’s own cellar. Gold and jewels.” Her frumpish dress swirled around her, tightened and stretched across her hips and breasts like cream, a satin sheath. She watched as Arvin’s eyes flicked up and down, lingering where her breasts strained the thin cloth. The dress shivered again, into demure, full-skirted broderie anglaise. Her hair grew blonde, and curled. Her flesh turned slowly pink, then golden brown. Her blue eyes shone. “I can be any girl you want,” she said. “I’ll bring you more than milk cakes, Champion.”  
  
“You know a lot about my life,” said Arvin. “Turn yourself back, please.”  
  
“Really?” Carrow’s red lips pursed in a little moue, but she obeyed. Her hair grew grey and straight; her skin dull white. Even the way her body moved changed, almost imperceptibly, as she sat down on the second red-painted chair. There was a certain sense of care, as if she’d lost a limb, or worked too long at carving giant-flesh and been poisoned by the dust. Only her eyes stayed deep, pure azure blue, like sky seen from a mountain where the air is thin. “You didn’t have to kill the queen and her old men with your own sword,” she said. “I could find more people to fall before your blade. Bad people. Good people, if you prefer. I’d make it easy for you, like I did just now. Arvin Seconday, you could wade through blood.”  
  
Arvin sat silently, and drank her beer. Her crooked nose, broken long ago and healed askew, gave her profile the solemn, lumpen look of an old coin, dug up from some time long before the queen’s reign, or even before the days of giants. Outside, the afternoon hung windless, parched. A pair of children scuffled by the side of the canal, then pattered off between the empty warehouses on the other bank. Their voices came up, shrill, then faded off. Somewhere, there was the sound of broken glass.  
  
 “I could show you the stars,” Carrow said. “If you don’t want Wishbone City, I could make you somewhere else to rule.”  
  
Arvin turned her head. Her blue eyes widened. The stark lines of her face seemed to come into focus, as if something had wiped her clean. “There’s nowhere else, then?” she asked. “Nowhere beyond the city and its lands?”  
  
Carrow frowned. “ _That’s_ what you want to know?”  
  
“I used to think of heading off to other lands. Getting away. You hear stories – but then, stories are cheap.” Arvin held up one broad and calloused hand. “Don’t tell me any more.”  
  
“I could show you. In a blink, in the twinkling of an eye.”  
  
“Don’t you get it?” Arvin held her glass of beer up to the light, so that it glowed like amber. “I don’t want anything else from you. Don’t think of anything I say as a request.” The light went out of her glass as she set it down.  
  
“Are you serious? It won’t do anything to lessen my claim on you, you know.” Carrow’s blue eyes were very wide.  
  
“I know.”  
  
“Well.” Carrow pulled one foot up onto the seat of her chair, and rested her chin on her knee. “You’re a cheap lay,” she said, without rancour. But she didn’t take her eyes off Arvin, all the same.  
  
The sun was past its zenith. The shadows lengthened in Arvin’s quiet room. Faint shouts rose up from somewhere far away.  
  
“You don’t even want me to clear up the chalk all over your floor?”  
  
Arvin raised one heavy eyebrow. “Don’t let me stop you,” she said. “If you want to, that is.”  
  
Carrow sniffed. “It was completely ineffectual, in any case,” she said. “Your summoning only worked because you had that pendant of yours.”  
  
“This?” Arvin pulled out a ragged piece of gold, hung on a leather thong, from under her shirt. “It used to be so pretty,” she said, a little sadly. “It melted when you came.”  
  
Carrow looked away. “It was only a feather,” she said. “How did you come to have such a thing, anyway?”  
  
“It was with me when I was left on the steps of the Cathedral as a baby,” said Arvin. “It was a priest who guessed what it might be.”  
  
“A priest told you that you had the means to summon a demon in your possession?”  
  
“He’s a friend of mine,” Arvin said. “We grew up together in the Cathedral’s Foundling Home.” She stopped, and cocked her head. “Listen,” she said.  
  
“Listen for what?”  
  
“The bell.” Arvin closed her eyes, briefly, and smiled. “Old Ansa Brown, the big Cathedral bell. They’re ringing out the queen. They know she’s dead.”  
  
“Well, yes.” Carrow sighed. “I lifted the sleep charm on the palace half an hour ago. If you’d told me that’s what you were waiting for, I could have done it sooner.”  
  
But Arvin wasn’t listening. The tolling bell was hardly audible at all, just little puffs of sound which came down the canal from high above, up in the upper city. It wasn’t that much louder than the beating of a heart, the way it sounds within the sour pocket of time before a fight. Still, she leaned back in her chair and smiled at Carrow. “Thank you,” she said.

  
  
\--

  
  
There were riots in the city for the next seven days. When Arvin ventured out into the streets for food, she kept her sword loose in its sheath, and carried a razor blade up her left sleeve. Twice she was cornered by groups of young men.

The first time, half of them were carrying armfuls of fancy goods from looted shops up in the Ventime Quarter.  
  
“Champion!” they yelled. “Champion, the queen is dead! Champion, let us show you a good time!”  
  
Some of them were wearing masks from the Mystery Plays put on at Godstide and on other holy days. They must have got into the Cathedral’s stores. One of them, wearing the broad pale mask of the Virgin Mother of God, pink circles on each cheek and a neat red smile, reached out to her. He was still carrying a tangle of silk and sweetmeat boxes in one arm. His near hand held a knife.  
  
Arvin stamped on his instep, pushed his mask askew, flicked her razor open, and stuck its blade up under his chin. “Who do you think I am?” she asked the men.  
  
Their masked faces looked back at her. She let the razor bite into the Virgin’s throat, and knocked his knife out of his fist with her other hand. She felt him swallow.  
  
“Champion!” he howled, and broke away. A box of sugared fruit escaped his arm and spilled across the street. “Champion!”  
  
The young men swung away, jostling each other and hooting with laughter. One of them was wearing a pair of battered angel’s wings, and leaving a trail of gold-painted chicken feathers as he went.  
  
“I see your grand plan is proceeding well,” Carrow remarked, stepping out of the cover of a wrecked market stall. “How brave a thing it is to see a tyrant fall.”  
  
 “Were your wings once really golden?” Arvin asked. She pulled out the melted pendant and held it up to the light. “Did this belong to you?”  
  
Carrow shrugged. “I don’t have to consider anything you say as a request,” she said. “You told me so yourself.” She bent down and picked up a half-smashed Ensuma fruit which had lodged among the cobbles. “Those ones just now? That’s just the way you humans are,” she said. “Savages wearing masks too big for you.” She took a slow, considering bite out of the fruit’s gritty bruise. Blue juice, almost the colour of her eyes, ran down her chin. “Not bad.”  
  
“I’m not wearing a mask.” Arvin tucked the razor back up her sleeve.  
  
Carrow reached up and traced one slightly sticky finger round her forehead, down the line of her jaw. “Well, even if you are,” she said, “it suits you beautifully. I’m going to so enjoy taking it off you, piece by piece.”

  
  
\--

 

  
The second group of men were singing songs.  
  
One of them, hardly more than a boy, his jaw heaving with acne, raised his voice in a crackly falsetto. “The queen, she had a bonny son - he's far away but he will come! When he is grown he’ll come to town, to kill the slut and take the crown!”  
  
It was an old song; it had been an old song when Arvin was a girl. Now, though, the men were singing it in the streets of the upper town, with the glinting flesh of the palace giant just showing behind the shopfronts at their back. The air smelled faintly of smoke, from distant fires.  
  
“I wonder when they’ll get bored of waiting for their new king to come along?” Carrow said.  
  
This got the men’s attention. “Who’s your pretty friend, Champion?” one of them yelled. “Does she open her legs up just like the old queen?”  
  
“They say the queen got opened up all right,” said another. “Guts all over the palace, the way I heard.”  
  
“Oh,” said Carrow. “You have no idea.”  
  
Arvin clapped a hand on her shoulder. “What the fuck are you doing?”  
  
“Having fun.” Carrow tipped her head and smiled beatifically at her. “You should try it sometime.”  
  
“Yeah!” A short man, the tips of his ears nibbled by frostbite and his skin the colour of turnip-flesh, elbowed his way out of the group. He wore a holy banner of the Archangel around his shoulders like a cape, the gold thread of the angel’s sword catching the sun. This group had looted the Cathedral, as well. “Try having some fun, Champion. We can show you a good time!” He grabbed his crotch. “If the queen can do it, you can!”  
  
“Dear me,” Carrow murmured. “Do you think he’s talking about fucking or dying?”  
  
But the men weren’t listening to her. Instead, the spotty youth stumbled forwards, his eyes belladonna-bright. He was wearing a bright purple jacket, far finer than the rest of his clothes. “That’s the Champion you’re talking to,” he said fervently. “Show some respect! She’s nothing like the old queen!”  
  
“Sweet on her, are you, Martol?”  
  
“No!” Martol screwed his face up. This close, his breath smelled of pine. He’d been drinking fine mountain spirit out of some rich man’s cellar. In fact, the bottle was still in his hand, a bulb of bubble-shot green glass, big as a man’s head and still almost full. “I think she should be queen, is what,” he said. “Haven’t you ever seen her fight? A new queen. A better queen!”  
  
“You are sweet on her,” the short man was saying. Then he stopped, and laughed.  
  
Arvin had plucked the bottle out of Martol’s hand. Tipping her head back, she took one swallow, then another, and another, her throat working.  
  
The men around her cheered.  
  
Martol grinned as well, his eyes wide. He plucked at his fine jacket. “That’s strong stuff,” he said, as if to himself. “Real strong.”  
  
The shorter man grinned and stepped sideways, laying his hand on Carrow’s shoulder.  
  
Arvin took one last gulp from the bottle, spun on her heel, and spat it out, straight into his eyes. He stumbled away, clawing at his face and swearing.  
  
“Damn,” said one of the men. “Don’t touch the Champion’s girl, huh, boys?”  
  
Arvin she stumbled sideways, waving the empty bottle aloft. “Come and see my next fight, lads! See just what kind of queen I’d be!” she said. “I’ll win for sure, you know. I’ll win so much!” She was slurring her words, and wobbling on her feet.  
  
Half the men had lost interest already. Some of them turned to help their companion, his eyes now swollen almost shut. “Fuck’s sake, stop crying like a little girl,” one of them said to him.  
  
“That’s right,” said Arvin. “I’ll show you all. I’ll win!”  
  
“Yeah, Champion. Whatever you say.” The men were leaving, drifting off down the street, smashing a few shop windows in a desultory way as they went.  
  
Only Martol lingered, frowning. “Champion?” he asked. “Are you – are you okay?”  
  
Arvin lurched towards him, the bottle nearly slipping from her fist. “Course I am, lad!” she said. “Come see the fight, yeah? It’s like you said, isn’t it? I’m the best!” She stepped forwards, then back. Her arms windmilled.  
  
Carrow stepped forwards and pulled Arvin’s arm around her shoulders, half holding her up. “Don’t worry, sweet thing,” she said. “I’ve got her. You run along, now.”  
  
“Yeah.” Martol bit his lip, then nodded briskly. “Yeah, I’ll come to the fight, Champion! I still believe in you!”  
  
They watched him trot off down the street, after his comrades. The men were singing songs again. _When he is born, he’ll come to town_.  
  
“Aw.” Carrow leant all her weight against Arvin, tapping one foot to the tune. “That was so adorable. You didn’t kill any of them!”  
  
“Why should I have?” Arvin disentangled herself from Carrow and drew herself up. She held the empty bottle up against the summer sun, squinting at it. A greenish shadow covered half her face, lapping up against her broken nose, as if she was part underwater. “I’m glad I didn’t have to break this, though. It’s nice.”  
  
“You could have the grace to be at least a little bit drunk,” said Carrow. “And you could have saved some for me.”  
  
Arvin shrugged. “I thought you only liked rotten things.”  
  
“Ripe things,” Carrow corrected her. “Ripe, my dove.”  
  
“Don’t call me that.”  
  
“My sweet, my dear, my _own_.” Carrow spun around, the tattered lace of her skirts casting a wide and whirling shadow on the dusty street. “Are we going home now?” she asked. “Don’t you have a fight to try to lose?”  
  
“No. Not right now.” Arvin set off up the street, towards the heights of the upper city. “I’m going to the Cathedral,” she said. “There’s someone there I need to see. You can do whatever you like.”  
  
“Or I could do whatever you want me to do,” Carrow muttered. “It’s not as if it would make any kind of difference.” Still, she caught up her long skirts and hurried after Arvin.  
  
“It would make a difference to me,” said Arvin, pausing briefly for Carrow to catch up. “If you’re getting bored, you can always snatch me down to hell.”  
  
“Hmm.” Carrow matched Arvin’s stride. “At least do some more pretend-drunk stuff for me? That was pretty good. Almost convincing!”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Not even if I ask very nicely?”  
  
“Absolutely not.”  
  
They turned the corner into the next street, still bickering. Behind them, a summer wind roused lazy plumes of dust from the dry street. The curtains in an upper window twitched open briefly, then closed tight again. The sky stretched wide and blue as Carrow’s eyes.  
  
The smell of smoke grew stronger.  
  
  
\--  
  
  
The Cathedral stretched and staggered over and around the head of the upper city’s giant, just underneath the furthest reaches of the palace. Unlike the palace, the Cathedral was mostly carved out of giant-flesh, its soaring walls translucent. Its builders had left enormous fingers jutting out, holding aloft some wax-faced wind-worn saints.  
  
“It looks like a pile of burnt-out candles, doesn’t it?” said Arvin, looking up. Her face was soft.  
  
“If you say so.” Carrow’s lips were pursed.  
  
The great bell Ansa Brown rang jerkily, a few short peals, as they walked through the huge west end doors into the nave. Milk-lit and arching high on frond-like ribs, the nave was ordinarily full of scurrying priests and vergers, processing dandies in their finest gear, and scrubby urchins running after dogs. Now it was almost empty, the side-chapels darks. Someone had pulled down the gilt vestments from the carved saints in their niches, and piled them high around one slender pillar. A couple of women hurried past them and out into the upper city, their arms full of fat white candles. A few of the finer tombs had been defaced with obscene graffiti and still-wet and glistening red paint.  
  
“It could be worse.” Arvin peered around her as they went. “They’ve stripped the shrine of Saint Unsettle, of course. All those rubies.”  
  
“What a pity.”  
  
“But not the Archangel’s altar.” Arvin nodded towards the golden wings towering above the statue of the angel in the transept, their uppermost feathers catching the bright sun from the high windows. The Archangel’s sword gleamed amongst gold and fat sapphires in its crystal reliquary, held up in the statue’s arms like a small child. Offerings crowded around the statue’s feet - platters of little cakes and withered flowers – to all appearances untouched by looters. Perhaps the looters had left some themselves.  
  
“Ludicrous.” Carrow sniffed audibly.  
  
Arvin turned to look at Carrow, her mouth curled in what was almost a smile. “Are you all right coming here?” she asked. “Does it hurt?”  
  
“I _wish_ ,” said Carrow fervently. “No, it doesn’t. If you must know, I simply object to … all this. It’s vulgar.”  
  
“I didn’t know you had such tender feelings.” Arvin was smiling now for real.  
  
“Oh, please.” Carrow kicked at a coiled-up offering candle, the kind which started out just the same height as their donor. “You’re the one who tried to kill the queen and then leave the mess for other people to clear up. Don’t talk to me about tender feelings.”  
  
“The Cathedral really is getting to you, isn’t it?” Arvin ducked through a side-door into the cloisters. Unlike the rest of the Cathedral, they were carved of stone, and drowsy with the scent of lavender, coming through from the bushes growing around the inner quadrangle. There was no sign of looting here.  
  
“I’m surprised you’re so at home here. With your proclivities.”  
  
“I grew up here, remember?” Arvin stopped for a moment, looking out through one broad arch into the square of green grass in the centre of the cloisters. The fountain in the centre rose and fell, rose and fell. Small, gurning demon-faces looked down from the roof bosses and the column capitals, sticking out their tongues. There was the hum of bees.  
  
“I can’t imagine that you ever fitted in.”  
  
“Well, no. But I always liked this place, all the same.” Arvin peered at the base of the pillar to her left, running her broad, sword-calloused fingers down the vines carved up its sides. “Ah, yes. Here it is.”  
  
“What?” Carrow ducked under her arm to see. “Oh, that’s from when you were little, I suppose?”  
  
It was the name ‘Arvin’, scraped at waist height into the pillar, in a child’s scraggly, uncertain hand.  
  
“How did you do it?” Carrow asked. “This isn’t soft stone. Must have taken you a while.”  
  
“Oh, no, it was easy.” Arvin stepped back and smirked at her. “I used the feather. I always thought it was too hard to be real gold.” She frowned. “It would only write my name, though. Not my friend Pretor’s. I tried, but it kept slipping.”  
  
“I should hope so!” Carrow sounded almost prim. “You used the feather? For – for graffiti?”  
  
“It was mine. The only thing my mother left with me.” Arvin’s gaze shifted upwards for a moment, to where the wide white bulk of the palace loomed over the Cathedral.  
  
“You used it as a writing implement!”  
  
“Well, eventually I melted it into slag bringing a demon up from hell to work my will.” Arvin pulled the lump of gold out of her shirt and patted it briefly, before tucking it away. “I would have thought that was much more disrespectful.”  
  
“That was its intended purpose! More or less, anyway.” Carrow bent down to look at the carved letters again, frowning. “You were so small,” she said. “Children are strange things.”  
  
“I suppose you were never a child, were you? But you’re not wrong.” Arvin led the way through a small wooden door at one corner of the cloister, holding it open for Carrow. “Children are strange, all right. And some of us stay that way.”  
  
“I hope you’re not talking about me.” Arvin’s childhood friend Pretor was a long-faced man with an uncertain jaw, as if he’d been left to sit for too long at an angle. He was standing at one end of a long sunlit room, three walls of squared stone and the fourth a curve of giant-flesh, smooth as milk.  
  
The Mother of God, her face symmetrical beyond all bearing and exactly the shape of a spoon, stared down at them in various stages of completion from frames and easels propped around the room. Pretor had been grinding powder, at a table crowded thick with pots of coloured powder, and rags, and a blue bowl half full of speckled eggs. The air smelled of paint.  
  
“Of course I was talking about you.” Arvin strode across the room and clasped his arm. “I’m glad you’re safe.”  
  
“They took my gold leaf and my cheapest blue,” said Pretor. “They thought it was lapis.” He sighed. “Of course, there’s more buried under a loose stone out in the cloister. Who’s your friend? And why are you carrying around an empty bottle?”  
  
Arvin shrugged. “Why not?”  
  
“I’m Caris,” said Carrow, suddenly oozing charm. “The Champion here saved me from a group of ruffians! I’ve never been so scared.”  
  
“That’s good.” Pretor stared at her for a moment, his head cocked. Then he turned back to Arvin. “You didn’t do anything, did you, Arvin? Anything stupid?”  
  
“You’ll have to narrow it down.”  
  
“You didn’t use the feather?”  
  
“Of course not.” Arvin paused. “You think it would really work?”  
  
“I’m not sure.” Pretor leaned back against the table, rubbing at his face. The white powder on his fingers left streaks down his cheeks. “It fits the descriptions I found, I can tell you that much. Can I see it again?”  
  
“I don’t carry it around with me. And you’ve got something on your face.”  
  
“It’s only ground-fine giant-flesh. For the first layer, you know. Before I even trace the image of the Virgin Mother.”  
  
“Spooky things.” Arvin looked around her at the Mothers of God, their grave dark eyes wide open. There were saints, too, holding up the implements of their demise, and an Archangel with a silver sword, sending out wriggly little rays across the picture like small eels.  
  
“Arvin, please. Remember where you are.” But Pretor’s tone was vague, his reprimand automatic. He was thinking of something else. “The queen laid the giants to rest, you know,” he went on. “She built this city. Cleared the land around it. Nobody except her remembered the old days.”  
  
“She taxed the lower city into the ground, while the gentlemen of the Ventime Quarter rotted their teeth with sugar stolen out of ancient tombs, far out among the giants. She let the dust from giant-flesh clog the fields. Every year the land we have to farm grows smaller, and its fruits more strange.” Arvin crossed the room and scrubbed at Pretor’s face with her sleeve. “You know what giant-flesh does,” she said. “You think that _I_ take risks?”  
  
Pretor sighed. “You’re right,” he said. “But still. You know she used to send out ships to search for other lands where men still lived? So few of them came back that she stopped altogether, before either of us was even born. I wonder if that’s when she changed.”  
  
“I don’t much care.”  
  
“Oh,” said Carrow suddenly, “I think Arvin cares a lot.”  
  
Arvin rolled her eyes. “You can’t know that, because we only just met,” she said deliberately. “When I saved your life in the upper city, remember? If you can’t keep your mouth shut, get out. _Caris_.”  
  
 “Fine. Fine! My apologies, Champion.” And Carrow went back to staring at the half-finished paintings, a fine line etched between her delicate brows.  
  
Pretor was frowning. “You don’t still think - the way you did about the queen when we were young? When we used to listen to those songs out on the steps of the Cathedral?”  
  
Carrow perked up again. “Those songs? Like _The queen, she took a_ –”  
  
“Yes,” said Pretor. “And the one about the babe in the rushes, and _The Queen’s Lost Child_.”  
  
“Of course not.” Arvin snorted. “One golden feather isn’t enough to make me lose my head. I don’t really think it was her late lamented Majesty who laid it with me in my basket out there on the steps.”  
  
“I see.” Pretor nodded slowly. “Though if the queen had once had something similar, it would explain a great deal, I suppose.”  
  
“She probably did.” Arvin stuck her hands in her jacket pockets. “She used a demon to get what she wanted, and look where that got her.”  
  
“Ruling Wishbone City for centuries?” Carrow was bending over one of the half-finished paintings.  
  
“Don’t touch that,” said Pretor. “Please.”  
  
“I mean, it got her dead. And rotten long before she died.” Arvin shook her head. “Sorry, Pretor. Didn’t mean to get maudlin. Keep safe, will you?”  
  
“Of course. The militia are getting things back under control, anyway, up here. And they say the Lovely Runners are gathering their forces, down in the lower city.”  
  
“I wouldn’t know.”  
  
“You could if you wanted to.” Pretor frowned. “You could do a great many things.”  
  
“Ah!” Carrow swung around, smiling. “I couldn’t have put it better myself.”  
  
“Well,” said Arvin, “one of those things is going to be going to be getting back to my rooms. I’ve got a fight tomorrow. Come along, Caris.” And, nodding to Pretor, she turned and walked out of the door.  
  
Carrow and Pretor stood silently as Arvin’s footsteps echoed away through the cloisters.  
  
“Leave her alone,” said Pretor quietly. “Demon.”  
  
“That’s a mean thing to say.” Carrow gave him her best smile.  
  
Pretor shuddered. “I knew what you were the moment I saw your eyes,” he said. “She’s not meant for you.”  
  
“Oh? What is she meant for?”  
  
“I remember the first time I saw her fight,” said Pretor. “We were sixteen. She went down to the lower city, and I followed her. I understood then that she was marked out by God. No woman could fight the way she does, otherwise.”  
  
Carrow laughed. “So, what? You want her to be queen?”  
  
“People are talking about it.” Pretor’s hands were trembling; his gaze skittering up and down Carrow’s body as if he expected her to grow horns or a tail. “Leave her alone,” he said again. “Or I’ll make you.”  
  
“I’d like to see you try.” Carrow gave a little mock curtsey, and made for the door. “I must dash,” she said. “Arvin will be waiting.”  
  
Alone in the sunny, still room, Pretor let out a long shuddering breath, and rubbed his hands up and down his robes as if to get them clean. Then he saw the painting Carrow had been leaning over, and the blood drained from his face. It was one of the more finished pieces, the colour almost filled in. And, where once God’s Virgin Mother had looked out of the painting, holding her holy child tight as a sword, her lips barely curved, now she was wearing Carrow’s smile, wide and obscene and red.  
  
  
\--  
  
  
The sword fights took place on the far outskirts of the city, where the bonefields of dead giants came right up to the city walls. The straggling slums beyond the walls were built on scattered limbs, the walls of whore-houses and stinking tanneries made out of piled-up pearly fingers, or a giant’s enormous and fine-featured face. There were plenty of these faces, left behind when men had carved up their insectile, armoured bodies to make walls or carts or swords. Giant’s faces, like their hands, looked human. Individual. Most people thought it was bad luck to damage them, and so they stayed, half buried or built over, staring upwards or down with pale and open eyes.  
  
Arvin had taken Carrow as far as the huge amphitheatre where the fights were held, which was all but hollowed out of the bonefield itself. Tiers of seats and balconies rose up around the wide white fighting pit, built into and around the flesh of giants. High overhead, the skyline, just fading into apricot-tinged dusk, was jagged with huge limbs.  
  
Now Carrow was leaning over the edge of a balcony, waiting for Arvin to enter the pit. The man Arvin was fighting was already there, tall and well-muscled, holding himself with a fighter’s grace. Carrow frowned, then shrugged. The balcony was lined with discarded cups, most of them carved cheaply out of giant-flesh, some of them still holding dregs of cheap plum wine or cheaper rotgut spirits. She chose one half-full cup, and took a delicate, considering sip.  
  
“That’s mostly backwash, you know,” came a voice from behind her. It belonged to a tall, angular woman, a curved sword at her hip, and a swirl of iridescent turquoise paint glinting against the pale skin of her face. “I could buy you something less revolting?” The woman smiled, easy and slow. “I’m Kanan, by the way. Kanan Evenday.”  
  
“That’s all right, Kanan.” Carrow selected another cup. “I like it like this.”  
  
“Suit yourself. Waiting for the Champion to come out, are you?”  
  
“Oh, yes.” Carrow grinned. “She’s my everything.”  
  
“You’re one of those, are you? Bringing her flowers and trays of little almond cakes?” Kanan sighed. “Yeah, I know how it goes. I was the same as you, once.”  
  
“Really?” Carrow turned away and craned over the balcony. The challenger was still waiting in the middle of the pit, dancers moving around him, holding up torches which, from above, made fiery patterns in the air, like red-gold fish. Noise came up from the amphitheatre into the hot summer night as solid as pillar, carrying smoke with it, and smells. Human sweat and flesh, and frying onions. Burnt grilled meat. Old blood.  
  
“Yeah.” Kanan came up beside Carrow, looking down at the crowd. “You don’t need to worry, you know. She always takes her time to make an entrance. Has to give the crowd a show. She doesn’t want them to get bored, after all.”  
  
Carrow looked at her sideways. “What’s boring about Arvin, then?”  
  
“You have got it bad, haven’t you? Nothing much, I suppose. Except, of course, she’s never lost a fight.” Kanan looked around the amphitheatre, drumming her fingers on the pommel of her sword. Flower-sellers were hawking armfuls of Heartache and Blame-Lilies, blazing the dense, rich reds and oranges which showed they’d grown in giant-thick soil. “They keep coming, though. They used to come hoping to watch her fall. Now, I don’t know.”  
  
“She’s never lost a fight,” Carrow whispered to herself, smiling. Her thick grey hair fanned out around her face like smoke.  
  
“You must know that much,” Kanan said. “Even if you’re not from around here. From out near the edge, aren’t you? Out under the bonefield. I can tell. I’m from the far west, myself. We had a whole leg sheltering our apple orchard. Never thought anything of it, as a kid.”  
  
“Oh, yes,” said Carrow. “When you were very small and carved your name into things.”  
  
Kanan snorted. “Yeah, that’s one way of putting it.” Her fingers beat on, faster and faster, against her sword. “Look, kid,” she said. “I wouldn’t usually go this far. But then, you’re not exactly Arvin’s usual type.”  
  
“What’s wrong with me?”  
  
“Nothing! She just tends to like them a bit less innocent, you know?”  
  
“Oh. I know the feeling.”  
  
Kanan frowned. “Right. Yes. Well, I guess I’ll just let you know what got me jumping out of her bed, back in the day. Let you do what you want about it. That sound good?”  
  
“Lovely.” Carrow found another half-empty cup. The noise below was growing. The dancers far below had left the pit; were standing round it, holding their torches high.  
  
“So, I used to take a turn in the pit, myself. Sabre. Wasn’t ever the best at it.” Kanan peered down. “Yeah, here she comes. Making an entrance.”  
  
Arvin walked out into the pit with gold streaked wide across her scalp and down her face, holding her sword unsheathed. She wore black breeches and undershirt, her breasts bound tight. Carrow had seen her do it. The crowd roared like an avalanche. She raised her arms, and circled slowly, facing the crowd. She never looked at her opponent once.  
  
“She’s so gold,” Carrow murmured. “Shining.”  
  
“Yeah, she’s a golden girl all right. Nice, as well. Kind to widows and orphans. Sweet in bed.” Kanan bit her lip.  
  
Below, Arvin and her opponent bowed to each other, and began to fight.  
  
“Ah.” Kanan’s voice was rueful. “Look at her go. She’s still the best – you see that thrust? Still gets me, even now. Although, wait. Something’s off.” She leaned further over the edge of the balcony, her eyes narrowed. “She’s moving wrong.”  
  
A yell rose up from the crowd like a punch. Arvin had tripped. She went down hard and fast on her left arm, just rolling out of the way of her opponent’s strike after she hit the floor. Rising to her feet again, she moved slower and more stiffly, favouring one side.  
  
Carrow waited for the noise to ebb, before tapping Kanan on her shoulder. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “She’s just trying to throw the match. Tell me the rest of your story.”  
  
Kanan stared at her. “Do you know Arvin at all?” she asked. “You don’t do you? Or you’d know what a stupid thing it was, that you just said.”  
  
Carrow shrugged. “I was in her rooms just this afternoon,” she said. “On the yellow chaise-longue. She filled a big green wine bottle with water and put a flower in it.”  
  
“And you brought the flower, of course.” Kanan sighed. “Fine. All right. I’ll spill.”  
  
“You do that,” Carrow agreed.  
  
Far below, Arvin staggered. The crowd belled and cooed, and threw down cups and flowers at the pit.  
  
“I’d been wounded, that day,” Kanan said, speaking loud and close to Carrow’s ear. “Slash to the thigh. The kind you’re lucky when it just hurts like fuck. Arvin, she took me home and stitched me up. Ten stitches, nice and neat, and spirits over the wound. I thought I’d die, you know? It hurt that much. Then she put me to bed in her own bed.”  
  
“That’s sweet.”  
  
“You’d think.” Kanan frowned down at the pit. Arvin was weaving and swaying, blood dripping down her neck from where a thrust had nicked her scalp. “Damn. I guess we all get old.”  
  
“She put you to bed?”  
  
“Oh, yeah. I woke up in the middle of the night, and she was licking at my wound. Getting right in there. Had half the stitches out already. Blood all round her mouth.” Kanan shrugged. “I was out of there before you could say _Archangel preserve me_ , I’ll tell you that much.”  
  
Down in the pit, Arvin’s opponent went in for a killing blow, ducking under her upraised arm to strike at her belly. His mouth was a small black hole in his tiny face; he was shouting something.  
  
Arvin’s arm moved almost languidly, bringing her sword down. It cut across his back. He fell down, awkwardly, before her feet. The small hole of his mouth opened wider, then closed, then opened again.  
  
“Oh,” said Carrow. “She won’t be happy about that.”  
  
“Did you hear what I told you?” asked Kanan. “Do you see, down there, what she is? Went for his spine, without a thought. Because, somewhere inside, she likes it. Likes to kill.”  
  
“I heard.” Carrow watched as Arvin nodded to the crowd, and left the stage. It was hard to tell that her shoulders were curved, as if under another weight. Blame-Lilies, red as sunset, thudded down, until the body in the middle of the pit was almost lost. “I saw.” She patted Kanan’s hand. “I don’t think Arvin would have liked you telling me, though.”  
  
“Well, too bad.”  
  
“It is, you know.” Carrow leaned closer. “Arvin doesn’t let me do much for her,” she said confidingly. “I suppose she grew up too much on her own. Learnt to rely on herself. And of course, she doesn’t want to turn into the old queen.”  
  
“What are you babbling about?” Kanan tried to pull her hand away.  
  
Carrow held on. “Oh, nothing much,” she said. “Only, you’ll die in five years' time. Of an infection from a rusty knife, down in the bonefields, out among the tombs. If the world doesn’t end first, of course.”  
  
Kanan jerked her arm away. “Crazy little fucker, aren’t you?” she said. “That’s what I get for trying to do you a good turn.”  
  
“Exactly!” Carrow smiled. “That’s what you get.”  
  
“I hope Arvin guts you, then. You’re asking for it.” Kanan turned on her heel, and walked away.  
  
“Remember,” Carrow sang out after her, “five years! Your hand will slip when you’re carving a piece of giant-flesh. And, oh, the _smell_!”  
  
Kanan was gone.  
  
Still, Carrow gazed after her. “Asking for it, am I?” she said. “I’ll bear it in mind.”  
  
Behind her, men in overalls were clearing out the pit, carrying armfuls of lilies, as if every one of them was heading off to meet a sweetheart of his very own.

  
  
\--

 

  
“I know what you like,” said Carrow later that night. “I’d like it too.”  
  
“I’m not asking anything from you, remember,” said Arvin. She was washing herself down by lamplight, standing in a tin bath in her narrow kitchen, pouring tepid water over herself from a bucket. Dried black blood flaked off and softened, and ran brackish down her legs, beading the hairs with small dark drops.

"That's why I'm doing the asking, this time," said Carrow. She came in and leant against the kitchen counter, looking Arvin up and down, from her grizzled scalp and broken nose to her solid legs. She was holding Arvin's straight razor, tapping the open blade against her lips. "You can cut me right down to the bone," she said, "and I'll be just the same in the morning. Arvin, my own dear, you can eat my heart."

Arvin shivered, all over, quick and tight. She tipped the bucket. Water clattered down into the bath, catching the low, warm light as it ran down her skin like oil.

"You meant to lose, didn't you?" Carrow's voice was low. "You probably want to hurt something now, don't you? You want it bad."

"I'm not even meant to be here," said Arvin. "You should have taken me away already."

Carrow shrugged. "Well, I wanted you to stay. I wouldn't worry. They're not going to drop a crown on your head just because you won another fight."

"I tried to lose," said Arvin softly. The light caught the long line of her back as she bent to towel herself dry; cast the scar across her cheek into sudden sharp relief. "I moved without thinking."

"You could really stand to do that more often." Carrow ran the blade of the razor down the curve of her cheek. Tiny beads of blood followed it, coming up as if wished into being. They were black in the lamplight. "Come on," she said. "You're as good as dead already. You should have some fun."

Arvin looked up, her eyes wide. "Seriously?" she said. " _That's_ your pick-up line?"

"What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing." Arvin laughed, a little creakily. "Nothing, really."

"There you are, then," said Carrow. "Arvin, come to bed."

 

\--

 

The next morning, Arvin's sheets were streaked and draggled with fresh blood.

Carrow lay curled, sleeping in the middle of them, quite intact.

 

\--

 

The summer ended. People still sang songs of the queen's lost son in the main streets, but they sang other songs as well, and brought the harvest in, and patched up the city's broken windows with first planks, then glass.

Carrow had the chaise longue re-upholstered, in pale blue brocade. Arvin, almost immediately, spilt beer over it, leaving a wavy tidal stain.

The Worshipful Company of Merchant Traders set up camp inside the palace, guarded, so people said, by the Shadow Boys.

The city filled with blobby, illegal pamphlets, talking in excited tones about a new age, and the grand destiny of working men in Wishbone City.

At night, Arvin learned the exact shade of Carrow's bones.

 

Carrow met Kanan in the Ventime Quarter, out shocking the genteel ladies with a girl on each arm. Her face-paint was yellow this time, like primroses or pollen.

"You've lasted longer than I thought you would," Kanan told her. "Longer than anyone else ever has, with her. Normally, they bring their little offerings; she throws them out after a week."

Arvin was across the road, staring at old maps in a shop window.

"I took your advice under consideration," said Carrow primly.

"Oh," said Kanan. "Right. Good luck to you, I suppose, you crazy fuck. Just lay off the creepy predictions, yeah?"

"Four years," said Carrow serenely, "and ten months."

"Or not." Kanan shrugged, and pushed her companions ahead of her into a teahouse. "Better make the most of it then, you little shit," she threw over her shoulder. It sounded like advice.

Arvin came up and stared after her. "I know that face," she said. "What did she say to you?"

"Nothing much. What did you find?"

"Old books. Old maps. Probably all wrong, anyway."

"I could tell you," said Carrow, sideways and sly.

"But I'm not going to ask," said Arvin. "Come on. They're selling spiced plum wine down by the bandstand in the park."

 

\--

 

Once, they went out of the city, as far as the edge of the bonefield.

At first, children laughed and hooted amongst the fallen giants. Pigs rooted around in puddles skimmed white with powdered giant-flesh, and ragged clumps of staring purple daisies grew tall and spindly where blown earth had caught in a high eye-socket, or the hollow of a neck. Women were stringing washing out to dry between huge shattered feet. The air smelled of pigshit and soap.

Further on, though, away from the last outcrops of the city, they walked through empty fields. The autumn grass swayed, tall, dry, and uncut. The giants' tall, glinting flesh cast strange reflections across the open fields.

"You can't feed the grass here to animals," said Arvin. "They go strange."

"Do they, indeed?"

Arvin nodded. "They say the queen conquered the giants," she said. "Laid them low. But why did she build Wishbone City so close to the bonefields? That's what I want to know."

"You could have asked her," Carrow pointed out.

"Well, I didn't."

"No, you just swept on in and cut her down. Did you hear what she said, before she fell?"

"No," said Arvin. "Don't tell me."

"Very well." Carrow stood for a moment, looking up at the wall of tangled giants. Clouds sailed overhead with the wind, making the giants look as if they were moving too, towards them, bearing down. "There wasn't much room, you know. Most of the world is covered with the things. Even the ocean floor, you see. The highest mountain and the deepest trench. And, besides, she did make them. Perhaps she like the idea of being able to look out upon her work."

"She made them." Arvin's voice was flat.

"Oh, yes. A very long time ago, and not all of them at once, not at first. But she made them, and then she had to call a demon in to wake them up. And the rest, as they say, is history." Carrow shrugged. "I think it was all to do with one of your human wars. I wasn't paying much attention, not at first."

"You were the demon, then. I suppose I should have known."

"Probably." Carrow leaned up against Arvin and pointed. "What are those bright things, there? Underneath the giants?"

"What I was looking for."

Up close, the brightness turned into clothes, some of them quite fine, all of them crumpled and mildewed, silting into the ground beneath the giants. There were silk dress and tattered woolen jerkins and a child's padded winter suit. Hanging from one of the outcrops of giant-flesh, still quite fresh, was a fine purple jacket.

Arvin stared at it, then looked away. "People come here," she said, "to walk into the boneyard."

"Naked? That's kinky of them," said Carrow. "Are we going to try it?"

"They don't go in there to fuck," said Arvin. "They just go."

"If they want to die, there must be easier ways to do it," said Carrow. "They could jump into the canal. Or slit their throats. Or drink acid. Even summon up a demon to eat up their souls, if they only had the right equipment close to hand."

"But they don't," said Arvin. "They go into the bonefield. More and more of them, every year."

"It's almost as if people need hope," said Carrow brightly. "Like a new queen, with a whole lot of special songs just waiting on the tips of everyone's tongues!"

"I'm never going to be queen," said Arvin. "No matter what the songs say." She frowned. "You're keen on those songs, aren't you?" she said slowly. "I don't suppose you had anything to do with them? With why there are so many of them?"

"Who can say?" Carrow prodded at a hank of rotted silk with her toe. "This is all very sordid. Humans are unpleasant creatures."

"I suppose you'd know." Arvin stared at the small huddles of clothes for a little longer, then shook herself. "Let's go back."

They walked back with the low sun in their eyes, sending long dark shadows flickering out behind them, rippling over the dry grass and the ragged nettles. Bramble thickets grew massive and knotted around loose, half-buried heads and fingers, thick with black inedible fruit. "You know," Arvin said, "I don't even blame the queen for this, not really. Or the giants. Or even you."

"That's nice of you," said Carrow. "Who do you blame?"

"God, I suppose."

"Oh." Carrow frowned. "I mean, I wouldn't disagree?"

"I'd think not." Arvin walked on, stamping her way through the pallid, flabby reeds growing besides a cloudy stream. Water which came from underneath the giants was never fit to drink.

"What gets me," she said, after a while, "is why you went against the queen's wishes? If you were her demon, once. That isn't a question," she added, hastily.

"Isn't it?" Carrow grinned up at her, sunny and sharp. "And who's to say I ever did one single thing the queen did not desire?"

 

\--

 

The next time Arvin went up the Cathedral, she went alone. The aisles were full of promenaders, once again, showing off their fine clothes and whispering in corners; chalking up bets against the sides of tombs. Children were playing hide and seek around the pillars. Arvin threaded her way past the Archangel's shrine, nodding to the tall gleaming figure with its wings and sword, the way she'd done when she was still a little girl.

Out in the cloister, a mangy stray dog was drinking out of the fountain, her  whiskery face intent.

Arvin sat for a while in the opening of one of the arcades and watched the dog drink, then squat to piss, then sniff around at the dry lavender bushes, dull with autumn. After some time, the dog let Arvin pet her bony head, the arches of her skull distinct beneath coarse, springy hair. Her ears were very soft.

"I'm living with a demon," Arvin told the dog. "She lets me cut her open every night."

The dog licked her palm.

"Well, I'm glad you approve," said Arvin. She leant her head against the sun-warmed stone of the cloister archway. The dog nosed at her dangling fingers, then trotted off. "I used to be so tired," she said. "But now I'm not."

Then she went inside to see Pretor.

Pretor was painting new masks for the Mystery Plays. His workshop was full of outsized heads.

"Arvin," he said. His face was drawn and thin, his lopsided chin almost askew. "You look different."

"I'm fine," said Arvin. "Nothing has changed."

Pretor regarded her sadly. "Are not her eyes the colour of the heavens?" he asked. "And is not the crown fallen from her?"

Arvin sighed. "I wondered if you knew what Carrow was," she said. "She isn't very good at acting."

"It wasn't that," said Pretor. "It was its eyes."

" _Her_ eyes." Arvin threaded her way forwards, between the heads of angels with round pink dots marking their cheeks and yellow rags for hair. "And anyway," she said, "plenty of people's eyes are blue. My eyes are blue."

"What are you doing, Arvin?"

Arvin shrugged. "I'm really not doing much of anything," she said. "I haven't asked her for anything, not since the queen. So there's not much she can do, either. She's only here because I asked her to come, after all."

"That can't be it," said Pretor. "She's corrupting you."

"Do I look corrupted? We have some fun, that's all. You should try it sometime."

"And your soul?"

"That's my business, isn't it?" Arvin looked around the room. "What happened to your spooky Holy Mothers?"

"I can't paint them any more," said Pretor. "They come out wrong."

Arvin frowned. "Pretor," she asked delicately, "are you all right?"

"I thought ending the queen might mean a new beginning for the city," he said. "But now I think that maybe it was just an end. I thought that when I told you about the golden feather - about what I thought it could do -"

"You thought the queen's lost son would come to town, to kill the queen and take the crown?" Arvin sighed. "I'm not even a son, Pretor. You're the one who listened too hard to those old songs."

"Those songs are about you," said Pretor. His eyes were wet.

Arvin stepped forwards. "Please," she said. "It's true, I killed the queen. I would have killed her even if she had been my mother. I think, in some ways, I believed she was. And I've spent most of my life wanting to make things hurt." She took a breath. "But we both know the queen never had a child. Can you imagine even the queen herself keeping _that_ quiet?"

"The demon could have done it," said Pretor. "With its wiles."

"Her wiles," said Arvin. "I don't believe she did."

"I saw the queen, you know. When she came to sit in her private chapel, on Godstide and the Eve of Souls. She looked like you, I thought. I mean, with longer hair. Without the nose."

"I can't say I noticed it," said Arvin. "When I cut her down."

Pretor sagged. "So that's it, then? You're just going to live? Like anybody else?"

"When you put it like that," said Arvin, "does it really sound so bad?"

"When I first saw you fight," Pretor said, "I thought that you would change the world. Destroy the fuckers who abandoned us. Who left us here."

"Pretor, please. You're setting these new angels a bad example."

"I suppose I am." He gave a quick pat to the head nearest him, setting the papier mache rocking. "They're just quick fix-its, really. Fakes. None of the old artistry to them."

"They'll look the part," said Arvin.

"Perhaps." Pretor rubbed at his hollow cheeks. "And the demon?" he asked. "You're keeping it?"

"Well," said Arvin, "I'd say it's more that she is keeping me."

 

\--

 

"Once," said Carrow, "there really were much more of you. Humans all over the world. Like ants."

"Really." Arvin was sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing only a battered pair of soft grey trousers. It was mid-afternoon, still warm. A bunch of orange Blame-Lilies, from her most recent fight, flamed on the floor.

"Fine, then," said Carrow. "Like pretty butterflies." She stretched, her joints popping, and licked her lips. "I can still taste you," she said. "Come back to bed."

"I need to eat something. We can't all live off rotten fruit."

"I prefer to think of myself," said Carrow, "as living off the fruits of love."

Arvin regarded her. "Sometimes," she said, reaching out to run a hand through Carrow's hair, "it is very obvious that you've never had to rely on your words to get anyone into bed with you."

"Well, I never used to be this invested." Carrow flung out her arms across the sheets. "I don't know why you persist in insulting my language," she said pettishly. "My dove."

"Hmm. Go back to the butterflies."

"There were so many of you. It was much more interesting."

"And then the giants came."

"That's right. Big and red and walking. They were the colour of blood, back when they were alive. And they walked, and walked. There was a time when Marguerite and I thought that we'd never make them stop."

"I never really thought of the queen as having a name."

"Of course she did. It was a nice name. She was a nice person, once. My little pearl. That's why she told you 'thank you', you know. She always was thoughtful like that."

"I told you not to tell me what she said."

"And I don't have to take anything you say as a request." Carrow kicked her way half out of the covers, laying her head on Arvin's lap. "Don't you feel better, knowing?"

"Not really." The bell, old Ansa Brown, was tolling three. Ducks quacked indignantly in the Arguile Canal. The Blame-Lilies shed faded, burnt-ochre petals on the floor. "Did the queen ever have a child, like in the songs?" Arvin asked.

Carrow looked up at her, blue eyes guileless and deep as wishing wells. "Nope," she said. "Sorry, my sweet. It's not that kind of song, although if you'd wanted it, the entire city would have believed it was. You could be sitting on that throne right now."

Arvin was silent.

"Hey. You've got me, haven't you? You're mine. Isn't that enough?" Carrow reached up, her white fingers teasing at Arvin's heavy breast. "Arvin?"

"Oh. Yes. I knew, of course."

"Of course."

"Is that what the queen wanted? What she asked you for? Someone to kill her, who'd look enough as if they had a claim to the throne? Somebody strong enough to carry on?"

"Something like that. But you messed it all up. You're messy, Arvin."

"Messy like an ant."

"You're not an ant," said Carrow, with perfect confidence.

"Ants build whole cities on their own, you know." Arvin bent her head down, and brushed her lips against Carrow's lifted hand. "In the spring, we should go to the high orchards out by the coast," she said. "They say the apples there are green as glass."

"In the spring." Carrow turned her head and pressed her smile against Arvin's thigh. "If you're still here," she said, somewhat muffled.

"What?"

"I said, if we're still here."

 

\--

 

At Godstide, the streets filled with people wearing masks.

Mystery Plays jangled through the city on vast, slow wagons, their actors moving slowly under their new masks, still sticky with fresh paint. Over and over, at each place the wagons stopped, the Mother of God raised up her holy babe, or fled with him, or wept as he was killed. The saints died, beautifully. The Archangel raised up a shining sword.

Somewhere between the fruit market and Magpie Lane, up on a wobbly stage, a group of angry men were killing God.

"Buy me a sugar apple," said Carrow, pushing through the crowds.

"Are you sure? They're only bad for you, not rotten."

"I'm trying new things."

"You're freeloading, is what you are." But Arvin shouldered her way over to a stall, where apples, red and glistening with sugar, hung in rows.

"You could ask me for money any time," said Carrow, biting through her apple's sugar shell. "Or pearls, or precious jewels."

"Or dragon's teeth and the new moon, to dip into my morning tea. I know, I know."

"I don't see why you'd want either of those things. And the moon wouldn't fit." Carrow pointed towards a distant wagon, where larger-than-life figures moved upon a stage. "Look. Saint Unsettle is getting ready to be barbecued. Again."

"I'd rather not." A group of laughing men pushed past them, wearing cheap paper masks. Smoke from torches and braziers drifted up into the chilly autumn air, and lingered, trapped, between the roofs. The streets were gullies filled with smoke and gods.

Carrow shrugged. "Let's dance, then." Musicians were playing on the street corner, near where the crowds eddied past the dark side streets which led to the Arguile Canal. Carrow tossed her half-eaten apple away into the throng, and struck a pose.

Arvin bowed to her.

"We're not about to fight," Carrow told her.

"It's not that different," said Arvin, moving forwards and taking her hand. "Although, one day, I'd like to fight with you, you know."

Carrow spun out, then back in, her white skirts flaring. "With me?" she asked. "Or _with_ me?"

"Both. Either." Arvin moved round her, and the crowd and all its masks and torches moved round them.

"I wouldn't mind," said Carrow, laughing. "Both or either. Oh. Arvin." She stopped. "I made a mistake," she said.

A silver sword was jutting from her chest.

 

An Archangel, in a big, blobby mask, had pushed it home.

Arvin removed the silver sword from Carrow's chest, slashed through the mask, and pushed the Archangel into an alley. Carrow followed them, slowly, clutching her chest. Behind them, the music played on, as if nothing had happened.

The Archangel's mask fell away. "I had to do it," Pretor said. "For you, Arvin. For the city."

In the alley, the crowd sounded very faint and far away. The dark waters of the canal lapped, softly, at its far end. "Don't be a fool, Pretor," said Arvin roughly. "You did it for yourself. Just like the way I killed the queen." She hefted the silver sword thoughtfully. "Although Carrow has taken worse, from me," she said. "You really thought that an old relic like this could kill a demon?"

Carrow coughed from behind her, a polite wet noise. "Unfortunately," she said, "that's not exactly the case. I hate to say it, but that used to be my sword." The front of her white dress was sopping red.

"That's the Archangel's sword," said Pretor. "From the shrine."

"Yes," said Carrow. "I was a gold girl, long ago." She sat down suddenly and leaned against the wall. "I fell long before your church was made, man of God. I'm falling now."

"No," said Arvin. "No, I'm asking you for something, Carrow. I'm asking now. Heal yourself up. Heal yourself right now."

"Sorry," said Carrow. "I said I made a mistake. I should have done something when I recognised my sword. I shouldn't have teased your little friend."

"He's not my friend," said Arvin. "Not now." Her face grew calm, the way it did when she fought in the pit. In her right hand, the silver sword began to shine.

"Arvin?" Pretor's voice was full of simple awe. "I was right about you," he said. "I was right."

Carrow stared at the light. "Well, will you look at that," she said thickly. "You really are a throwback. I suppose it explains a lot, now that I think about it. No wonder you never lost a fight."

Arvin lifted the sword, spilling white light across the alley. "What do you mean?" she asked. "Will it help save you?"

"If you can command the sword." Carrow coughed, soggily. "It needs a sacrifice, though. A life. At the beginning of the world, I killed the darkness every single morning." She laughed, rusty and loud. "They've made new arrangements since, of course. Whatever the plays say."

"Arvin? Don't listen to it."

"A life." Arvin didn't hesitate. She turned around, swinging the sword with her like a line of light. "I'm sorry, Pretor," she said.

The sword went into him like open air.

Pretor looked down. "I saw her smile," he said. "Her smile." His long-fingered, clever hands fluttered briefly where the bright blade went in, then stilled.

Arvin laid him down on the ground, and raised the sword. "I understand now," she said. "It's mine. And all its works are, too." Briefly, she pressed one palm against Carrow's wet chest. For a moment, the alleyway was filled with the sweep of great golden wings.

"Fuck!" Carrow grabbed at her front, doubling over. "That hurts. That really, truly hurts."

Arvin helped her to her feet. "Even though it's your own sword?"

"Because of that. And it's your own sword, now."

"I know." Arvin bent down, and closed Pretor's eyes. "He got what I wanted, I suppose. When I killed the queen. He shouldn't have wanted it, either." She paused, still kneeling. "You and the queen. How did you two do it, then? _Why_ did you do it?"

"Are you really asking?" Carrow sighed. "I suppose I may have lied by omission, earlier," she admitted. "When you asked me if I'd ever helped the queen to hide ... that lost child, from those songs."

Arvin got slowly to her feet, and walked down to the slow black waters of the Arguile Canal. "I'd say so, yes," she said. "You lied."

"Well, yes." Carrow stood beside her. “We made you together, the queen and I,” she said. "Wishing can do a lot of things."

"I see." Arvin held out the sword before her, so that it shed its light on the canal. The water looked like mercury.

"Although, naturally, we neither of us thought that you'd take after the way I used to be. We thought you'd kill the queen, and rule over the last days of the city. That you'd despair, and rage, and see it fall. You'd finish all our stories for us, when I could not act freely in the human world, and she not longer had the heart." Gently, she laid her hand on Arvin's arm. "You could still do it, if you want."

"I think not." Arvin turned the sword back and forth. The brick wall of the warehouse on the other bank of the canal shone as if touched with frost. "When were you going to tell me?"

Carrow rubbed the back of her neck. "When it would most bring you to despair?" she offered. "Except I kept putting it off."

Arvin was silent for a while. "What if I don't really care at all?" she said. "Mother?" She reached out with her free hand, and pulled Carrow close. Light from the sword rose up around them like a silver flame. "What if I _like_ it?"

They kissed beside the dark canal, biting each other's lips, as if daring themselves to leave a mark which could not be undone.

After a while, Arvin broke away. "I feel something," she said. "In the back of my head. And Pretor. I need to take him to the Cathedral."

"Forget about him," Carrow suggested. "He nearly killed me."

Arvin folded her arms, and shook her head.

"Fine. If you wish, then you can move him with a thought. You see?"

"Oh," said Arvin, softly. "Yes. I do."

She did. Pretor's body vanished from the alley, leaving only a long dark stain behind.

"As for that feeling in your head." Carrow grinned, vicious and wide. "I do believe," she said, "the giants are waking up." She leaned out over the still dark canal, and pointed downstream towards the city walls.

On the horizon, the midnight sky was red as dawn.

 

\--

 

The giants lay red, and pulsing, as if they had been peeled. The giant in the high city shone busily, like veins of warm red glass, through the tall palace, the Cathedral, and the merchant's houses. The bonefields glowed like one great fire.

Carrow and Arvin watched them from mid-air.

"They're beautiful," said Arvin. Her low, sweet voice was calm. Her sword, tucked in her belt, cast clear, cold light around them both.

"What are you waiting for?" Carrow asked. "Finish your other mother's work. These things haven't had enough juice to move in years, not since she got cold feet about the whole idea. But there's enough of them to cover up the city and its lands as if nothing but the giants had ever been. Then every single bit of earth will say her name."

"How touching." Arvin stared down at the giants. "But no, I don't think so." She moved one hand. Far down below, the giants at the edge of the bonefields twitched.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm moving all of them except the palace giant. Further away from the city, and the fertile lands."

"You're _what_?" Carrow swung round. This high, her pale and tattered dress was whipped around her by the wind, her grey hair streaming out against the stars. Her lips were red, her skin was white as bone. In the faint light which spilled from Arvin's sword, her eyes were blue as sin.

"I'm going to clear some more room," said Arvin. Slowly, the outmost layer of giants began to move, clambering over their fellows, further into the bonefield.

"You're going to give those humans a few more filthy centuries of life, you mean? Before the little scrap of land they have grows too full up of poison dust to let them live? There's nowhere else to move the giants to, Arvin. The world's like this, all over. You can look!"

"I know. I can still pile the giants higher, though. Push more of them down into the sea. Make a bit more of an opening, for people to live."

"Why?"

"Why would I try and buy a little more time, for a world that's near its end?" Arvin shrugged. The wind blew back her heavy jacket; plastered her thick woolen trousers to her legs. "For one thing, I like our rooms," she said. "I'm not going to leave the city, just because of this."

"You're not?"

"I didn't flit back when I killed the queen," said Arvin. "I'm not going to run away because I killed my friend. Although I do want to go out and see strange places, for a while. Now that I can." She stretched her arms out, wide against the wind.

"You're buying the city time because you like those grubby rooms by the Arguile Canal?" Carrow frowned. "I never even got you to buy better curtains."

"Well, there you go. There's time yet, now." Arvin watched the giants move, slowly, like coals falling backwards up a fire. The bonefield was creeping slowly backwards, inch by inch. "Things changed for me, after you gave me more time," she said. "There in the throne room."

"That wasn't an act of mercy! This wasn't the intended moral of that little ploy."

"And yet."

Carrow sighed. "You know," she said, "if I'd known you were going to cause this much trouble over humans, I would never have left you and that old feather of mine on the Cathedral steps. I would have brought you up myself, as a right-thinking demon. Or as the other thing, as the case might be."

"But you didn't." It was quiet, this high up, except for the wind. Arvin extended her fingers, and the giants underneath them moved a little faster.

"No, I didn't," said Carrow. "Maybe I'm sorry about it, all right?"

"Well." Arvin was quiet, considering. "I might not have been so happy to fuck you into a bloody mess, if that's the way things had been," she said at length.

"So it's probably just as well! I'm glad we got that sorted." Carrow shivered pathetically. "Can we go somewhere more interesting, now?"

"You aren't any colder than I am. But, yes. I think I've got the hang of it," said Arvin. "The giants will keep on moving, until they can't climb any higher up and closer in."

"That's good," said Carrow absently. "Where would you like to go? This little world is almost dead, but there are other realms."

"Are there, indeed?" Arvin bowed her head. "I think I'd like to find my other mother," she said. "I suppose she's down in hell."

"I'm not so sure. There's a strong argument that she was doing nothing but God's work," said Carrow. "But we could go and see, I suppose."

Arvin nodded. For just an instant, the smile which slipped across her face was cruel. "I'd like to kiss you right in front of her," she said. "Then tell her that the city's still standing, even now."

Carrow smiled. "You always did remind me of her. The way she was when she was young. She liked to cut, as well."

"All the better to do God's work," said Arvin, meditatively. Her hand slipped to the Archangel's sword, strapped to her hip. "Do you think this thing can kill anything?" she asked.

"Almost anything. Just keep it away from me."

"Could it kill God, I wonder?"

Carrow paused. "I thought it could, once," she said. "Obviously, I was wrong."

"You were." Arvin drew Carrow closer, ran one finger over her lips. "But then," she said, "I might be different. I've never lost a fight."

 

High in the air, they kissed, so close together that they looked a single thing, blown by the wind.

Below them, the shining giants moved steadily, clearing a little patch of earth with every passing moment.

And Wishbone City lay, waking and alone, lit by the red giant under its upper streets, like the last embers of a dying fire.

 

 


End file.
